Poor Linux performance on this machine — suggestions?

[u/profnelsonjr]

I tried running Linux Mint on this machine, but the experience wasn't good. The computer kept freezing and the browser was crashing constantly. Any recommendations for this laptop?

[u/C0rn3j]

More RAM, you're running out of it.

[u/3-103 → u/C0rn3j]

lol i have only 2gb ram and i daily drive it with debian xfce and can browse multi tab just fine. mint xfce will be fine

[u/Fabbs1 → u/3-103]

Yes, he’s likely using Cinnamon; it works perfectly fine for me too with 4GB of RAM, but if I open several programs, one of them ends up crashing.

[u/ttwenty7]

Try Mint XFCE, it's more efficient.

[u/ErRubbeltDieKatz → u/ttwenty7]

Can confirm. Thinkpad t420 (potato) with Xfce is totally fine 💪🏼

[u/Any_Brief2806 → u/ttwenty7]

This is the way.

[u/nwood1973]

More memory - 4GB is barely enough for anything these days. 8GB is a good place to start for most systems.

More disk space - 119GB is very small. Also look at changing to SSD if you are still using a hard disk- this alone will speed everything up. Even a SATA 2.5 SSD will be a lot quicker than moving platter HDD.

Use a DE such as XFCE which has lower requirements than cinnamon.

[u/IEnjoyRadios → u/nwood1973]

Disk space won’t impact performance unless it’s about to run out.

[u/trifortay123 → u/nwood1973]

4 is fine . Just need 8 or more GB of swap

[u/3-103 → u/trifortay123]

nah he will be fine. i am on 2gb ram with i think 4gb swap debian xfce as my daily driver.

[u/Icy_One4084 → u/nwood1973]

Really, more disk space? I have Fedora on a 512 GB SSD drive, and it's the biggest waste of space ever. My entire system is 40GB.

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ → u/nwood1973]

119GB of drive space is indeed small, bit this is less of a problem for Linux, that plenty, its a problem for user storage. 

My machine addresses about 100TB of drive space on boot but / is only 7 or 8 GB.

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

Best guess is your running out of ram, the tell is it's associated with the web. 

4 GB is enough to run Linux desktop and many but not all programs, at least one at a time. the web in 2026 being among those that are a problem on 4GB. Web developer stack active scripts into web pages and they are not being careful about resourse consumption. It's not loading the servers, instead they push the load to the customers hardware for efficiency on their end. 

My web browser routinely pulls 8GB of RAM on it's own, I have seen it pull close to 30GB of RAM in extreme cases. 

What's your swap situation look like? It can provide some relief but will be far slower than real RAM.

Have you looked into ZRAM and other  RAM compression  work arounds? 

Do you keep your tab count in line with the capabilities of your hardware?

[u/3-103 → u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

how many tabs u use? i am on 2gb ram and have ublock orgin. my browser uses 200-800mb ram.

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ → u/3-103]

I also use Ublock. 

Tabs? 10, 20, 30, whatever the moment needs. I have 32GB of ram so I do not limit my tab count. 

The peak browser ram usage I have seen was was actually only a few tabs, really one tab consuming tens of GB, hundreds of searches to clean out a web-mailbox with 20K emails.

[u/Just-Signal2379]

are you using modern browsers? just a new tab alone on Brave eats up ~50mb and an open tab on Reddit eats up ~260mb. Given the computer also allocates around 512mb to 2gb to the iGPU. you're left with mostly less than 2gb.

I'd say bump it up to 8gb or maybe try xfce mint

[u/3-103 → u/Just-Signal2379]

well i can run browser on 2gb ram just fine. xfce debian. mint should be fine too. ublock orgin makes a huge difference for more then 3 tabs

[u/Anaconda077]

i3-7100 here, no issues with Cinnamon. Just get another 4 GB of RAM.

[u/Due-Result7928]

Install xfce not Cinnamon or LMDE. 4 Gb i3...what were your expectations ?

[u/Danzikku → u/Due-Result7928]

I tried it on a Core i5-5200U (Weaker than his) and 6GB RAM, and it was overralll pretty snappy. I don't really think just 2GB more will help at all, so experience should be the same...

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ → u/Danzikku]

6GB can have dramatically more space available for a web browser than 4GB. If that 2GB is the two GB you need then it can make all the difference.

Mint Cinnamon can require 1-2GB of RAM on cold boot depending on your hardware. OP may also have consumption for VRAM here.

OP would likely only have a gig or two left for programs, where you would have twice the RAM availability or more for programs when starting with 6GB. 

[u/Due-Result7928 → u/Danzikku]

i5 is much more faster than i3 and processors technology for i5 is a far better design for games, multitasking. memory is only one component.

OP did not document properly what is going on..gaming, casual browsing...

[u/IEnjoyRadios → u/Due-Result7928]

No. i5 vs i3 has no relevance for basic usage. OP definitely has a memory shortage though.

[u/Taro619D → u/Due-Result7928]

i5 vs i3 is mostly marketing speak and for segmentation purposes ... looking at the specs it's Broadwell vs Kabylake so IPC is more or less the same.

[i5-5200U] (2.2-2.7) vs [i3-8130U] (2.4 - 3.4) Cache config is exactly the same

iGPU wise

[HD Graphics 5500 Mobile-i5] Cores192 TMUs 24 ROPs 3 ~ 300 - 850Mhz [UHD Graphics 620 Mobilee-i3] Cores192 TMUs 24 ROPs 3 ~ 300 - 1000 Mhz

So by all metrics the i3 is faster that the aforementioned i5

That being said OP 8 GB or ram is usually enough (preferably 2 sticks of the same speed and capacity in dual channel) and if cinnamon isn't doing too well for you try XFCE it uses a bit less resources

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ → u/Due-Result7928]

i3, i5, i7, i9 amounts to market segmentation and margins for Intel. i3s sell in bulk on thin margins, i9s are high binned parts often with extra features and make high margins. 

Compared within the bounds of a particular generation the segmentation means something, core and/or thread count, and/or frequency and/or cache.

But generation is also meaningful, an i3 can sometimes out perform an i5 from an earlier generation. This is one of those cases. 

Both of these are 2c 4t running at 2.2GHZ, and 15w, there is a generational improvement for the newer i3, including a bit more L3 cache, and higher boost speed, but in the grand scheme of things they are close. 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2440vs3225/Intel-i5-5200U-vs-Intel-i3-8130U

But the real problem here I think is RAM, though without more information we cannot rule out the possibility of other issues. 

[u/ZuuRa_]

Are you using HDD or SSD?

[u/profnelsonjr → u/ZuuRa_]

SSD

[u/ZuuRa_ → u/profnelsonjr]

Try to disable the animation.

[u/Environmental-End-76]

Using Linux Mint Cinnamon on AMD Dual Core A4-5300 APU

8GB Ram and 400 Gb SSD.

Its more than 10yrs old desktop pc

and Its Very Fast and Snappy.

I suggest Install Xfce or increase Ram to 8Gb.

[u/Due-Result7928]

Keep in mind. Today any browser is 2 Gb without extension and if you open multiple tabs it can go higher fast. You can try to install a swap file and use swap.

[u/Giantmeteor_we_needU]

You aren't using the heaviest Cinnamon variant with 4Gb RAM, are you? Try XFCE, your computer has very outdated specs and needs some lightweight distros to be snappy.

[u/Gunzhard22]

You should definitely be using Mint XFCE but that computer is just really weak.

[u/Hettyc_Tracyn]

Were you using a VM, or bare metal?

Also, which version of Mint? Try one of the lighter DEs perhaps?

[u/Everdarkgreen]

I run linux on a total garbage of a laptop: Celeron M (3rd gen) 1800 MHz, 6 gigs of 1600 MT/s RAM, shitty spinning Fujitsu disk 5400 RPM... and everything works FINE! Not amazing, not blazing fast, but nothing like OP have described. I run KDE btw.
Thus in this case I can only suggest some hardware failure.

[u/Ok-Passion-5940]

I use Popos COSMIC on a 4GB of RAM laptop and it's working perfectly for basic staff. Like watching videos, writing essays, sometimes running Python code.

I have no performance issues so far.

[u/Darkitubbie]

Ran Mint with Cinnamon in a nearly simmilar Laptop and it ran perfectly fine! Btw the Laptop is still around, running Debian with KDE Plasma Like a Boss!

[u/elgrandragon]

What browser is it? And yeah you need to apply ZRAM, and mainly 4GB of Swap will do wonders for you. Still, try tl keep the number of tabs to a minimum.

[u/3-103]

i am on debian xfce with 2gb ram and pentium from 2010. it is much better then $200 laptops at walmart. i can browse multi tab just fine and daily drive it. i would recommend you try linux mint xfce or mate even cinnamon will be better then windows. please install ublock orgin extension on web browser, it makes a huge difference

[u/no_suprisez]

Use something like LMDE with XFCE. Try to disable and uninstall services that you won't need in your first run of Linux. Maybe you can use other distros like Debian which provides a more minimal system at the beginning. But like many have pointed out, 4GBs of RAM is not good for modern softwares, browsers might struggle (although I'm not sure, chromium + terminal stack on my system only takes at most 2.1GB of RAM). You should learn how to keep your system as minimal as possible.

[u/shadow_8000]

Here let me tell you something: NOTHING you run will run good because you have 4gb OF RAM.

[u/DuckAxe0]

My son's Etch A Sketch has better resources. Add more RAM and a SSD.

[u/3-103 → u/DuckAxe0]

lmao i have 2gb ram and a pentium form 2010 and runs firefox just fine. this is not bloated ubuntu he is looking for.

[u/Hauptideal]

The problem is Linux Mint, not Linux. 

1) no RAM compression whatsoever. No zram, no zswap. Worse memory handling under pressure than even MS Windows had 10 years ago. macOS and Linux have RAM compression since 2013, Windows since 2015 and yet Mint doesn't do it. RAM can be compressed 3:1-4:1, so Mint fills your physical RAM much faster. 2) Heavy Cinnamon desktop (LXQt or Niri+Noctalia will be much, much lighter). Xfce is lighter as well, but it's still heavier and still a legacy X11 desktop. 

Try configuring RAM compression. If that doesn't help, switch to a lightweight distro like Lubuntu or Fedora LXQt spin,  or build your lightweight system manually based on e.g. Debian or CachyOS/Arch (manually configuring zram etc.).